Small stand-alone vending machines, such as that conventionally used to vend round gum balls or peanuts, have been in public use for many years. The conventional machine most familiar to consumers is a cast metal lower unit fitted with a clear glass or plastic globe which retains the product to be vended. Such machines are provided both in table top and in stand-alone formats. While such machines have been manufactured in a variety of forms, the underlying basis of them all is a rotating circular plate upon which the vended product sits, the plate being provided with one or more (conventionally, 3) apertures through which the product is distributed.
In operation, such conventional vending machines utilize a handle which rotates about a horizontal axis, the handle being affixed to a gear which meshes with gear-teeth on the outer periphery of the aforementioned circular rotating plate. When a coin is inserted and the handle is turned, the product dispensing plate rotates in a horizontal plane about its vertical axis until an aperture in the product dispensing plate is aligned with a product delivery chute, and the product falls into the chute.
Such conventional gum ball machines (termed "pan candy" by those in the trade) have worked well, and continue to work well for their intended purpose. However, a principal defect in such machines is that one cannot vary the amount of product to be dispensed through the apertures in the rotating plate, so that the operator of the device is severely limited in his choice of candy or nut meats to be dispensed through such machines. For instance, such a device set up to dispense a predetermined quantity of a relatively small pan candy or nut (such as regular M&M's or small peanuts) could not thereafter be adjusted to deliver a more generous portion of a larger pan candy or nut meat (such as M&M Peanuts or cashew nuts). The only reasonable alternative is to purchase and maintain a relatively large number of machines to accommodate the many different sizes of pan candies and nut meats.
Additionally, because of the particular design of such prior vending machines, it has been found difficult to combine the individual units into multiple-unit devices. Because of the space inefficiencies inherent in the horizontally disposed rotating plate of the prior art, such units have been combined, if at all, only by affixing discreet individual units to a common connecting base member. Because of the difficulty in affixing the units to one another, and the expense involved in providing multiple discrete individual units, such units typically display only a single product.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a pan candy and nut meat product dispensing apparatus which can be adapted to conveniently display a plurality of product choices in a single unit.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a product dispensing means which is adjustable so that the owner/operator may utilize the vending machine to vend products of dispirit sizes.
It is a still further object of this invention to provide dispensing means which cause little or no damage to the product being dispensed.